Top Knot is a modern American restaurant with Asian roots that features flavors from Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Japan.

Top Knot is a prototype for Hai Hospitality: pop upstairs to an unabashedly playful, casual, patio driven, colorful, all-day concept in Dallas — it’s imōto (妹). If James Beard winning Uchi is the master, Top Knot is the rambunctious cousin living upstairs.

FÖDA developed the name for the brand as well conceptual narratives that carry through to items as small as cocktail names, knots on the server’s aprons, or hachimaki (鉢巻) on kitchen crew. The brand features typography built around CPH Tram by A2-Type and GT Haptik by Grillitype, manipulation of traditional Japanese patterns and motifs, explosive color, and hand painted interventions melded to the spatial design of Michael Hsu Office of Architecture.

The vertical blade like scrim of the façade converts into a vertical rule in menu and collateral. A single knot“calls out” important items in print and in digital gestures, and can be found—like an easter egg—in the door threshold.